Various tools for capturing, generating, processing, playing back and displaying three dimensional (3D) content media (especially motion video), have been available for quite some time. Display technologies for 3D content media in particular have evolved quite a bit from the earliest barely passable offerings which required the audience to wear flimsy “glasses” provided with a different (red or blue) lens for each eye, to more advanced electronic “stereoscopic 3D” glasses equipped with remotely triggered liquid crystal display (LCD)-based lenses (acting as alternating individually controlled “shutters”), which provided its wearers with an engaging and quality “3D experience”, given properly prepared 3D content media paired with the appropriate playback and corresponding display technologies working on conjunction with the 3D glasses.
However, this approach for providing a “3D experience” is quite cumbersome and very expensive to use and maintain, and has thus been of very limited commercial success, primarily being relegated to special entertainment venues, such as certain IMAX theaters and high-end amusement parks. In addition to expensive, and relatively fragile, glasses being required for each member of the audience (which in some cases excludes those who cannot comfortably wear them), the latest stereoscopic 3D solutions require sophisticated and expensive computer-based components for storing and processing the 3D content, as well as similarly complex and expensive electronic components for displaying the 3D content and remotely controlling the stereoscopic 3D glasses.
Of course, as is expected, the very limited availability and expense of the above 3D content media playback and display technologies, in particular, have led to a relative lack of interesting 3D content (due to the expense in its creation and the very limited commercial interest therein), which in turn has resulted in a very limited availability of 3D content capture and processing tools, thus essentially resulting in a “vicious cycle”.
Nonetheless, in recent years, there has been a revolutionary leap in the solutions being offered for displaying 3D content media. Specifically, a number of companies have developed and offered flat panel displays of varying sizes capable of creating a virtual 3D experience for the viewer without the need for the viewer to wear electronic or other types glasses or similar devices. Moreover, these displays do not require other specialized equipment and can work with specially configured 3D content that may be stored on, and played back from, conventional readily available computers. And, while these displays are still quite expensive, they are priced within reach of most organizations (and within reach of some consumers), with the price certainly poised to decrease exponentially, commensurate with an increase in production (as has been the case with the HDTV flat panel display market).
Therefore, for the past several years, ever since these newest stand-alone 3D (“SA-3D”) content media display technologies have become available at relatively reasonable prices, there has been a widespread consensus that proliferation of three-dimensional (3D) content media (both in entertainment and in advertising), as well as of the hardware and software technologies necessary for SA-3D content capture, processing, playback, and display, is inevitable, and that the market for 3D-related technologies will experience explosive growth.
Nevertheless, to date there has not been a dramatic push forward that would make the above predictions become reality. One of the main reasons for this aforementioned lack of the expected proliferation of commercially successful SA-3D-related content, software and hardware offerings, is the fact that although these newest SA-3D content media display technologies have a number of very significant advantages over all previously known 3D-related offerings, they also suffer from a number of flaws. Specifically, on the average, the quality and impact of the 3D experience delivered by the available SA-3D solutions is lower than that of conventional high-end glasses-based stereoscopic 3D offerings. Moreover the relative position of each viewer to the SA-3D screen (in terms of vertical and horizontal viewing angles, distance, etc.) has significant impact on that viewer's overall 3D experience when viewing the displayed SA-3D content. Moreover, the existing SA-3D hardware and software solutions for the capture, processing, playback and display of 3D content media have focused on areas of expertise, offer individual and discrete benefits in various narrow aspects of 3D and SA-3D technologies with little or no regard for the offerings of other solution providers, resulting in literally dozens of incompatible proprietary software and hardware products with nothing to tie them together.
It would thus be desirable to provide a system and method directed to one or more modular unifying scalable solutions, preferably implemented in a configurable infrastructure, that greatly improve the quality and impact of any 3D media content, while decreasing the required levels of computing power, and lowering the complexity of the necessary playback and display solutions. It would further be desirable to provide a system and method capable of achieving the above goals by selectively performing 3D content processing and/or settings/parameter configuration at one or more components of the infrastructure from 3D content capture to 3D content media display. It would moreover be desirable to provide a system and method capable of determining and implementing selective or optimal storage, transmittal, and application(s) of 3D content processing/settings parameter/profile configuration(s) prior to display of corresponding 3D content media to one or more viewers thereof.